Life in the Foust lane

I’ll tell you a little about Tim Foust, the aspiring heavy-voiced country singer in the photo accompanying this piece, and let’s see if you can guess what he did.

He’s been singing longer than he can remember. His mother said he would mimic melodies of songs even when he couldn’t form the words. He’d sing every chance he got through elementary, middle and high school.

Photo provided by Tim Foust

We are talking school plays, church, talent shows, pretty much anywhere they’d hand him a microphone.

So which of the following did Foust do once he graduated from Nederland High School:

A. Move to Nashville and gig around town until he found success as a songwriter.

B. Try to get into Juilliard or some other famous school of music.

C. Go to college to earn a pre-dental major.

If you guessed A or B, on most days you’d be right. But that’s not the path Foust took. The man who devoted nearly every free moment of his childhood to music decided he wanted to be a dentist.

So he spent a couple years in college preparing for that career. But it wasn’t too long before he realized he had “too much of the bug” and left school to pursue his dreams.

He said that ended up being a tough thing for him to tell his parents.

“I didn’t know how the family would respond to it,” Foust said. “Everybody in my family had always gone to college. It is just what you do. But everybody was really supportive.”

Ten years later he’s touring radio stations across America promoting his newest musical venture into country music.

Now 10 years seems like a long time between leaving college and pursuing that career but Foust has had quite the ride to this genre, starting with his first move after he left college.

Now like most aspiring musicians Foust relocated. He didn’t move to Austin, Nashville or even California, where he lives now, he moved to St. Paul, Minn.

What musical opportunities could be in St. Paul?

For Foust, it was singing bass in an acappella group called Blue Jupiter. He spent the next two years there performing with the group.

“Minnesota was culture and climate shock,” he said with a laugh. “I actually packed on some pounds because I didn’t go outside.”

Next he moved to Boston and toured with a group called Ball in the House.

“Between Minnesota and Boston, I have all the winter I will ever need for the rest of my life,” Foust said.

He toured with that group a few more years and then moved back to Nederland, where he split his time between cruise ship performances and substitute teaching for a few years.

One day he got a call from Joe Bilotta, the owner of Flying Pig Productions in Orange County, Calif.

“Some friends of mine had passed along my music to him and he told me he was forming a team of songwriters,” Foust said. “I flew out there and wrote with him some and he hired me on as a song writer which was a dream-job for me. At the time I thought my touring days were over.”

He said he mostly ended up writing country music, a genre he grew to love in high school.

He said he was raised on oldies and believes that’s what drew him to music with a lot of Harmony.

“My parents raised me on the Beach Boys and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and that kind of stuff,” Foust said. “My grandmother listened to a lot of Southern Gospel it has really present bass singers.”

While writing songs with the production company he began recording demo versions of the songs.

“The owner of the production company said ‘You know. You are pretty good at that. You should just be a country artist.’” Foust recalled.

Now he’s got an album, “The Best That I Could Do,” on iTunes and is out spreading his music one station at a time.

He said he’s hoping he’ll be able to swing his music back down to the golden triangle someday.